Metabolic Psychiatry
Investigating the link between severe mental illnesses and metabolic disorders like diabetes or obesity.
About Metabolic Psychiatry
The Metabolic Psychiatry Hub delivers new insights on the link between metabolism and severe mental illnesses (SMI).
The metabolic system provides energy for the body. Metabolic conditions include diabetes and obesity. Researchers think this system could be key in understanding SMI and could improve both mental and physical health for people affected by these conditions.
The Metabolic Psychiatry Hub is based in Edinburgh and led by Professor Daniel Smith.
Research
The hub takes several approaches to understand the link between SMI and metabolic conditions, by bringing together researchers from different disciplines. Projects include investigating existing datasets to better understand the genetics which have been associated with SMI and metabolic conditions.
Other projects aim to identify patterns across metabolic conditions and SMI, by using routine healthcare data from many individuals. Understanding these patterns can be used to help predict outcomes for people. It can also help to design new clinical trials for SMI using metabolic treatments to treat SMI, such as trialling the ketogenic diet or the diabetes and obesity medication “glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists”.
The team want to test how quantities of certain chemicals and nutrients in the body, such as glucose, lipids and lactate, and changes in sleep patterns could influence lead to relapses for people with SMI. For example, young adults with SMI will be asked to record their daily habits, sleep and experiences of symptoms. This will be paired with six-monthly blood analysis
How do people with lived experience work with the Hub?
A key part of the hub is integrating the voices of people with lived experiences of bipolar, schizophrenia and major depression. To do this, researchers are working with their Lived Experience Advisory Panel (LEAP) to define the ‘Top Ten’ research priorities for interventions in metabolic psychiatry. This group of researchers and people with lived experience feed into all other research within the hub and are working to co-produce a new approach to monitoring metabolic health markers and mental health symptoms in people with SMI.
I consider it a privilege to be a part of the Metabolic Psychiatry Hub LEAP, advocate for and further the discussion of metabolic psychiatry, as someone whose life was saved by the advocacy of others who experienced the profound efficacy of metabolic psychiatry-based treatments before me.
Michael Belanger. Member of The Metabolic Psychiatry Hub Lived Experience Advisory Panel (LEAP)
Hear from Hub Leader
In this video from 2024, Daniel tells us how the hub research will focus on interface between metabolic science and psychiatry in the context of SMI, and he explains how people with lived experience will be involved.
Read about METPSY
Metabolic biomarkers of clinical outcomes in severe mental illness (METPSY) is a new clinical research study at the Metabolic Psychiatry Hub at the University of Edinburgh that is now recruiting.
Dr. Arish Mudra Rakshasa-Loots, part of the team co-ordinating the study tells us more.
